Longing that lives within Us

From desperation and despair to divine

*contains explicit language*

I often feel despair, a desperation for intimacy and expression with life that leads me to greater and greater depth. It is near constant and walks alongside a fear, and potential knowing, that part of living may be that the longing might never be met, a hunger that can never truly be satiated.

It has found a way to live as depression and anxiety, woven into my nervous system, part trauma response, part low grade continued depletion, part the impact of a demanding and overstimulating environment, and perhaps even the conditions in utero. Mindset is a big part of it but to assert that it is merely an act of changing my mind, denies my body. I am so tired of being told that it is easy to decide you want to live differently. Yes, the choice is a simple one, but it lives in the complexes of our being. No, we do not need to complicate it by running our thoughts on why it “can” or “cant” be or return to the “shoulds” and “shouldnts” but we can learn to honor those parts when they arise and befriend them so that they are no longer enemies but messengers, maybe even friends. We can develop a sense of humor, even a lightness as we witness ourselves crawl (or fall) back in to familiar (albeit deeply painful or uncomfortable) places.

I am uncovering elements of addiction that move right along with shame and have me running towards someone or something while demonizing myself for the need. I recognize the felt sense that pain is more real, more familiar and more worthy of attention, and all in all, safer than joy. The need to extricate myself from the all-encompassing feelings of sadness and despair has me fighting with pain. I often try to meet it with my mind, attempting to figure things out so that I can get to the root and FUCKING DESTROY it, but as I am learning, that is just another, familiar pattern of mine, to want to battle it out… and the more I fight it, the bigger it becomes.

There is some beautiful drama in that though, isn’t there? The intensity of the feelings and depth of the despair, it is filled with intrigue. The absolute unknowable of a potential existence that moves with ease and is filled with grace doesn’t have the same appeal to the part of me the LONGS, that has learned that love is extremes and love is painful. That learning happened before I could name it or fully know it. It is the story of my family history, ancestry and socio-cultural values. It is written into love songs and films and now it lives inside my nervous system. It plays as my felt sense, gets translated as thoughts and/or actions, and then continues its cycles. If practiced enough, it can cause its own creation where neurological and hormonal shifts change the baseline and pain, anxiety, and depression are not temporary experiences but states of being.

I have practiced these states of being. So, to practice something new, demands an incredible amount of energy, patience, compassion and support. Some days I find myself so exhausted that I am in awe. I ask myself, “Why do I feel do depleted?” If my critical voice is quick to step in, she affirms that my feelings of exhaustion are not warranted, I most certainly did not “do enough” to deserve feeling tired. If, however, I am able to listen and offer a bit of space, I see that something BIG is happening. Each time I make a new choice, whether is it practicing a new, better feeling thought/sensation or try something different, like a movement or breath practice when some old miserable feeling comes barreling down, I am changing my everything. I am literally rewriting my narrative, supporting my biology in feeling, thinking and living more (I don’t say better because this isn’t some capitalistic self-improvement scheme. I don’t make these changes so that I can be a particular way (although sometimes that perfectionist does step in)). I show up, in every moment, to the best of my ability, so that I might live more fully, so that I might meet all of life with greater care and devotion… and damnit, that includes me! In fact, its defined by me.

My longing is divine. It knows what it needs, it recognizes what it wants and feels the dissonance when that isn’t there. For a long time, my insistence on greater (more likely the GREATEST love, with a very high degree of intimacy) was a need that wasn’t or couldn’t be met. First in my family, then in my most intimate and vital relationships, and quickly, within myself. There was a time, as a child, when that responsibility couldn’t realistically have been mine. But, as time went on, and my needs and longings were clarified, often by them not being met, they became mine. I am becoming more and more intimate with these needs, musings, longings and curiosities. I am learning to welcome what is and work (and play!) toward what I would like. Most significantly, I am becoming familiar with the many stories, scripts, thought patterns and actions that arise as the longing does. That familiarity is offering me a choice, what kind of love do I long for?

Is it the love I have known, grounded in abandonment and fear, and shame based, exciting because there is a chase, stirring because there is a battle, but painful and predictable because it’s a set up for failure, a surefire way to feel all the same feelings that drove it in the first place? Or am I willing to press the edge of the love I have known, in search for the love I’ve felt the whispers of? The love that has my belly soft and lips pulsing, the love that I can feel in the flowers, smell in the salt air and I call to along with the crashing waves and the swinging of my hips. It calls to me too, pressing me on as I refuse to remain small and in pain. It has me dancing to feel what I know, demanding love in truer ways, exhausting the long-held belief that love is pain and I deserve to suffer. I am asking for a new kind of intensity.

There is an intensity to the possibility of love that betrays the demand for the push and pull that ultimately leaves us feeling depleted and alone, desperate to start the cycle all over again and instead, demands all of us in new and unexpected ways. It is love that moves us and I so too, I am moved.